


The Ghost of Christmas Might-Have-Been

by ladyofjest



Category: The Venture Brothers
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 22:21:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/142350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyofjest/pseuds/ladyofjest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Krampus is back. Triana is fuming. Dean is... not entirely Dean. It's just another f%&@ed up Venture-style Christmas!</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ghost of Christmas Might-Have-Been

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Eurydice](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eurydice/gifts).



> This story draws a bit heavily on "A Very Venture Christmas" aired after S1 in 2004 - you should definitely check it out if you haven't already seen it! Also, I apologize to my recipient - I know you haven't seen S4, but there were aspects in it that I felt fit well with my story. I hope that you'll still enjoy the story regardless, and that watching S4 will just increase that enjoyment.

Krampus had gotten into the figgy pudding again.

Ever since he was accidentally summoned a few years ago, he seemed to feel he had a standing invitation at the Venture Compound on Christmas. He and Brock had a truce - Brock wouldn't pummel him in the kidneys and knife him in the back if he refrained from beating and sodomizing the guests. It's not like Krampus was inherently a worse guest than some of those who persisted in showing up to Venture's annual Christmas do. Certainly better than Colonel Gentleman in an eggnog-fueled rage.

His appearance a few years back had sent Dr. Venture into a frenzy of prescient dream research, as he babbled something about the veracity of his personal nightmares – something most sane people at all familiar with Dr. Venture shuddered to consider.

Triana stifled a groan and backed away from the refreshments table, which was a shame: the spread and the booze were the only two areas in which Dr. Venture seemed not to have stiffed them. She fingered the canape she'd snatched before Krampus and his screaming prisoners descended, and decided that maybe this was actually the influence of her dad's teammate Al.

She was too busy keeping track of the hellish invasion and checking out which guests hadn't been to the Venture Christmas party before (they were the ones screaming), while simultaneously watching to see if Dean had shown up - she was still pissed at him, and no favor to her father was going to make her talk to him _this_ holiday season - that she completely missed the fact that the wall she was backing into was well-muscled and wreathed in smoke.

She swallowed the canape convulsively. The wall grunted, and drawled a husky, "Triana."

"Hey, Brock." She shifted away, leaning against the actual wall and decided not to apologize. Instead, she opted to bum a cigarette. He raised an eyebrow, but flicked one out of the pack for her anyway. She waved the proffered lighter away, preferring to use her Jack Skellington-emblazoned Zippo rather than look like a sulky dame in a 40's flick.

Samson grunted again, shifting his stance so that he could continue to monitor Krampus' rampage as he reeled perilously close to Hank and his sort-of friend  
Dermott. Triana reflexively checked for Dean again, mostly so she could be ready to stalk off in an aggrieved huff should he appear. She got that he majorly liked her, fine, but that was no reason to pitch a fit over her eclectic education in unconventional sex acts. It's not like she'd ever even attempted a Rusty Venture, for Osiris' sake.

She scanned the rest of the party. Al had backed Shore Leave under the mistletoe again, or perhaps it was the other way around. Colonel Hunter Gathers was engaged in some kind of shouting match with Colonel Gentleman, and Dr. Venture looked aggrieved by whatever amusing anecdote Jonas Junior was so jocularly telling. Her eyes flipped past every subsequent oddity and bizarre character, only briefly stopping short when she noticed one of the Monarch's Henchmen hobnobbing with some members from S.P.H.I.N.X. And out of uniform too! She shrugged it off, though – no way was that the oddest thing here.

Dean was nowhere to be seen. She thinned her lips and told herself she was _not_ worried. Although they did lead lives with a ridiculously high mortality rate. Although the clone stock was depleted. Although the likelihood of visible familial grief in this group wouldn't be high, so how would she even _know_? Although...

"Pssst!" She'd never actually heard someone say _pssst!_ before. "Triana! Over here!”

She told herself she only turned in his direction the better to turn up her nose and storm off. But she continued turning and took up staring because Dean was standing, shirtless, in the shadows just beyond the nearby door.

Dean was standing, shirtless, in the shadows just beyond the door and stray Christmas lights were glinting off a pale, lithe, most puzzlingly _muscled_ chest. She slipped out of the room, mildly mesmerized. As she joined him, he finished shrugging into and buttoning up a plain black shirt. He left the first three buttons undone, and she wondered momentarily if he realized how much that suited him - if she were dressing him, she would have done it just so. She quickly realized that he was just too muscled for the shirt to fit comfortably. He saw her looking, and rubbed his hand sheepishly through his hair, which tousled too artlessly to be anything but arranged. "It's all the other D-- I mean, all I had in my closet that seemed appropriate."

She blinked at him, and remembered she was supposed to be angry. Schooling her features into stern disapproval, she straightened her spine and poked him in the  
chest. "Look, I'm still pissed with you about your ridiculous behavior at the prom, Dean! You don't get to just--"

"Waltz in here without apologizing?" He smiled lopsidedly at her, and that was when she noticed there wasn't an ounce of nervousness or awkwardness in him. He stepped into her reach, folding one long-fingered hand around her pointing finger. "I'm so sorry, Triana. I can only imagine how hopping mad I've made you."

This was not how encounters with Dean usually went. Usually, she would simply admire his cuteness vaguely and watch in detached amusement as he embarrassed himself. He just had no idea how to handle a crush on a girl, or even talk to one thanks to the isolation of the Venture compound and those creepy educating beds of theirs. She'd heard that Dr. Venture's father - the actual scientist - was a real lady's man. You'd think he'd know better than to get the social education of youth so radically wrong.

"We don't have long, though, and I wanted to show you something. Are you up for an adventure that doesn't involve seeing what messed up thing Santa's going to pull out his jolly bag of party tricks this year?"

"Santa? Dad said he was killed by a jet back in 1963. It's Krampus in there and, believe me, he's doing _unspeakable_ things to the figgy pudding!"

A look of horrified fascination crept across Dean's features, and she noticed that he'd tucked her arm in his, already moving her toward the R&D end of the  
compound. "Krampus? Honestly?" He craned his head to look behind them.

"What? Dean? Of course you know that! You cried so hard when you summoned him the first year that you vomited all over my new ruby patent leather heels. I never got to wear them again."

Dean winced, and shook his head. "Damn." He suddenly looked at her sidelong, eyes glinting, and said, "So, little lady, is that something I need to apologize for as well?"

She laughed, shoving him lightly. "Don't ever call me little lady again and we'll be fine." He'd maneuvered them quickly and efficiently into one of the more cavernous labs and, while Triana's lessons in sorcery kept her from fearing a walk in the pitch darkness, her curiosity was getting the better of her.

She raised a hand to summon a light - and let it fall back as Dean flipped a switch. A dozen consoles hummed to life, and multi-colored lights played out from a nearby array of boxes, shimmering through the air, swirling in kaleidoscopic patterns before they finally focused, resolving themselves into--- holographic representations of the Ramones. She barely had a moment to gasp before they began to move, the lights pulsed with the beat of their opening riff, and the music came up, loud enough to seem like they were hearing them live.

“Twenty-twenty-twenty four hours to go... "

She laughed with delight, shouting over the music to Dean: "DEAN, OH MY GOD! THIS IS PERFECT!" She didn't notice how he just looked at her, only heard his voice raised in reply: "AND HOW!"

They played through all her favorites, segueing into a mash-up of Ramones material that was really rather well-done. She spun in place, tapping her feet - such a crappy Christmas this had promised to be, far away from her boyfriend and with the bizarre denizens of the Ventures' world, but it had transformed into something utterly fantastic. She couldn't imagine being anywhere else.

And it was all thanks to this not-quite-Dean. She shimmied around until she could stare across the room at him. He was tapping his feet as well, singing under his breath. She'd never realized he was a fan, and had honestly always doubted he'd heard anything hipper than ABBA. She reached out without moving as her mom had shown her, gathering the frayed threads of _person_ that splayed out from every soul...

She didn't realize she'd closed her eyes. She only heard the music stop, and felt the warmth of Dean as he took her hands.

"You're Dean, but not..."

"Don't say it. Just... say you enjoyed my gift."

"It was amazing." She opened her eyes. The atmosphere was too weird. She forced a grin and quipped, "Wish Raven could've been here to see this! He digs the Ramones almost as much as I do."

"Ah, your boyfriend?" Dean dropped her hands, and she pretended that hers didn't twitch after him. "I'm not surprised. You're too fantastic of a woman to be alone if you don't want to be."

“Wow. That was smooth, Dean.” There was no sarcasm in her voice.

“I'll say!” He winked at her, and she grinned suddenly back at him. “I programmed some of your other favorites in here. What are you in the mood for? Switch it up with some Daft Punk, or maybe the Yeah Yeah Yeahs?" She relaxed back into the moment, and settled down next to him to flip through the screens on one of the consoles.

“I didn't even know you guys had anything like this,” she commented, leaning into him. He just rested the top of his head against her hair. It felt like the most comfortable thing in the world.

“Ah, we didn't. I sort of had to whip it up when I first arrived, so we lost a lot of time.”

She bit her lip before she asked again, gave voice to what she'd perceived when she felt his metaphysical face. Instead, they talked more about inconsequential things - about how her studies were going with her mom, how much she missed her dad. Dean alluded to his recent scientific projects, a girl he'd broken up with from Omaha. This time, it didn't sound like a lie meant to impress a girl he had no idea how to relate to. Their conversation was almost normal, at least in that way that anecdotes about camping trips to the Underworld and autopsies on chupa-thingies and the latest mischief from the Ventures' attached supervillains could be.

It felt like friendship, and like something she'd never had. And it was Dean, so like, but so unlike...

“This is fucking weird, Dean. Even for us.” They'd been holding hands again, and she didn't even know how long it'd been. “But I like it.”

He hugged her suddenly, or she might have hugged him. She could never be sure which.

“It's almost midnight,” he said to her hair.

“What happens when it's midnight?”

He pulled back, grinning. “I turn into a pumpkin.”

“Seriously? This is strange enough, I'd believe it. We haven't just hung out like this in... well, ever...”

“Ha! No, silly, no transfiguration. But your pop will find us soon.” Triana realized she could hear the chimes from the grandfather clock distantly. It should have been impossible given how far they were from the living areas, but a good sorceress always felt the approach of midnight. Or so her mom always said.

“My dad...? Who cares?”

As if her typical teenage rebellion were a summoning charm, Dr. Orpheus stalked into the laboratory. “Pumpkin! Where have you-- ?” He stopped and squinted at Dean and Triana, standing with their arms loosely wrapped around each other. “Trysting with DEAN VENTURE? Pumpkin, I had no idea!”

He wavered between stunned bewilderment and paternal protection for but a moment, before his expression changed. He drew himself up, all the better to tower thunderously (although the effect was rather spoiled by his holiday-appropriate red knit sweater). “You. You do not belong here. AWAY WITH YOU, INTRUDER FROM AN UNKNOWN TIMESTREAM! I RENDER YOU TO YOUR HOME DIMENSION AND BID YOU BOTHER US NO MORE!”

Triana felt her arms fall away from empty air, too stunned to pay much attention to her father's nonsense. Searing afterimages of the sudden portal left her blinking as Dean's parting words echoed in her ears: “Maybe we'll meet again next year. If you show me the way.” It felt like Dean was talking both about her and not her, and she had no idea why she understood that so implicitly.

“What – what's going on?” Another Dean -- skinny Dean, the Dean that belonged here -- struggled out from an adjoining lab, looking doped up. A small string of drool shone on his lower lip, and he seemed oblivious that he was wearing a lumpy sweater patterned with cavorting reindeer, but no pants. The other Dean must have figured putting this Dean out of commission and pantsing him, in that order, were the most important first steps to visiting a parallel reality.

Dr. Orpheus just stared in aghast pity. Triana, still glowing from a perfect evening, almost forgot to feel sorry for Dean: in that moment, she saw what he could be and not what he was.

Of course, it took only a moment for Dean to wake up enough to realize he was standing in front of her in nothing but an embarrassment of a sweater and his tighty-whiteys. He screeched “Triana!” and crab-walked behind one of the nearest consoles.

She too easily remembered what pity was. And yet.

* * * 

Dean sighed, locking up his personal lab behind him. He was unsurprised to find his father doing the same thing a few doors down. They both always seemed to find themselves slipping away in the middle of the annual Christmas party year after year, leaving Hank's charms and Brock's muscle to see the festivities through another little visit of Santa's and whatever the supervillains might have cooked up.

As they sauntered past the Awards Wall (starting with their twin Nobels and shading down from there in prestige), Dr. Venture slanted a sideways look at him.

“Were you tinkering with visiting that universe next door again? I told you we shouldn't have anything to do with them! That ignoramus doppelganger of mine _tried to write a musical_! It's taken me _weeks_ to field the damage he's done, and what's worst is that some of the ditties were _catchy_. Of course, I guess you can't truly squash pure genius, but...”

Dean shook his head, and let his pop rant on as they walked. He _was_ working on travel between dimensions, but had stalwartly been avoiding the one with the junkie failure of a Rusty Venture. Somewhere, though, Krampus was marauding through a Christmas party instead of Santa. Somewhere, Triana Orpheus wasn't dead and a Queen so deep in the Underworld that the living couldn't find her. Somewhere else, that Queen remembered Christmas, and nudged transdimensional portals into going awry as a gift.

He couldn't thank her enough.


End file.
